Wednesday, April 06, 2011

More Polls....and the environment

A couple of polls out: Global Views has its most recent party ID tracking poll out. More people say they are KMT/lean KMT than are DPP/lean DPP. With such a large number of people saying they are "independents" -- 28% it is likely that the poll vastly underestimates the number of pan-Greens.

According to a survey commissioned by the Taipei-based Broadcasting Corporation of China, President Ma Ying-jeou is not a shoo-in to win a second term. If President Ma represents the KMT, and Tsai Ing-wen the DPP in the 2012 Presidential election, the survey shows that President Ma would have a support rating of 36.35%, and Tsai Ing-wen 34.48%. If President Ma represents the KMT, and Su Tseng-chang the DPP in the 2012 Presidential election, the survey shows that President Ma would receive a support rating of 36.35%, and Su Tseng-chang 34.55%. In either case, 20% of the voters remained undecided.

Undecided is an enormous number of voters and is likely to include more pan-Greens than pan-Blues. It is still early, but if these numbers are anywhere near valid, it is good news for the good guys.

The Kuokuang Petrochemical complex in Changhua was the subject of a visit by all three candidates the other day. Ma was silenced and then later heckled. But recall that the Kuokuang project was approved by the DPP when current Presidential hopeful Su Tseng-chang was premier. According to the KMT report, Su humbly apologized for that decision. The fact that Tsai was reared in the neoliberal religion while Su is a consummate developmentalist state politician means that the environment will get no more than lip service in this election.

As a friend of mine noted, the opposition to Kuokuang may be vocal at the moment, but if the locals were seriously polled, you'd probably find that local supporters of the project outnumbered the opposition. I have biked from time to time in that area along the coast south of Lukang in Changhua and down through Yunlin. It is one of the most desolate, depressed areas of Taiwan, in my opinion, rather like the Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby. It could certainly use a boost, as the Taipei Times admonished today:

Anti-Kuokuang sentiment fomented when people became suspicious that the Ma administration had lost its neutrality and decided to push ahead with the project even before the Environmental Impact Assessment had been completed. Public Construction Commission Minister Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) has expressed concern about the impact of the plant on water and soil conservation, and the potential worsening of the problem of land subsidence, which may even compromise the safety of the Yunlin stretch of the High Speed Rail. His opinion has not changed. This is something that should be taken very seriously.

We have learned from last year’s fires at Formosa Petrochemical Corp’s sixth naphtha cracker and the current nuclear incident in Japan that just because a government says something does not make it true. People are more sensitive now about the possibility of an environmental disaster. If the government does give the go-ahead for the plant, can Ma guarantee the decision will not come back to haunt Taiwan?

Cities in Changhua County and Fangyuan Township (芳苑) need economic regeneration, but is Kuokuang the answer? Should the plant turn into an environmental nightmare, could local people cope?

For more information on land subsidence and other issues surrounding this plant, see this post I wrote a while back. But the cold hard fact is that the number of large developmentalist state projects like this killed for environmental reasons is infintesimal. Since both parties have approved many similar developmentalist state projects around the island that ran into opposition from environmentalists, it does not appear that the environment is really going to be a huge issue in this election -- the mud from these projects sticks to everyone.

Meanwhile, Randplanet still hasn't discovered the concepts of conservation or technological progress. Or that wind machines don't render useless all the land they sit on. Is no one submitting sane and sensible letters to the Taipei Times?

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I would rather ask Pres. Ma, DPP Chairperson Tsai and former Premier Su about the poisonous smokestacks along the Rende section of the SYS freeway , the Formosa plant in Yuan Lin and the man-made volcanoes near the Kao Hsiung airport rather than the Kuokuang Petrochemical complex in Changhua .

If the three of them will promise that these existing health and environmental hazards must go then I will believe them if they say that the still non-existent Kuokuang monster will be buried before it's born.

Otherwise they are all just being politicians who are afraid to offend big business .

"Randplanet still hasn't discovered the concepts of conservation or technological progress."

{Sigh...}

The numbers for electricity savings ("conservation") identified in the "scholarly paper" you linked to last time are small (250 MW hours per year, or <0.05% of the electricity produced by the three nukes alone).

Wind turbines are more or less technologically mature already, and whilst some crops can be grown between wind turbines, the sheer size of the required land for an onshore site to replace nuclear at 41.5 TW hours, or to make up 25% of electricity production at 58 TW hours... is enormous. Even with the E-126 we're still talking in the hundreds of square kilometres. Investment in onshore wind at that sort of scale might well result in "expropriation" among other things.

Solar photovoltaic meanwhile, if attempted on a serious scale like 25% of total electricity production, is just a crap joke, and anybody who suggests otherwise better get comfortable with the idea of walking around with a solar panel on his head.

The large number of undecided voters are more likely to be blues who are undecided about whether they'll vote at all, not who they'll vote for. They're unhappy with Ma's performance and a lot may decide to register their protest by staying home on election day. That's where the 2012 poll will be won or lost. If they decide to vote, Ma will win. If not, it'll be close depending on who the green candidate is.

I think the petrochemical complex may get stopped yet. Otherwise it is hard to explain why Ma went to an anti-Kuokuang rally to "listen to the people". If he was determined to go ahead with the plant, surely he would have been wiser to go to a meeting where those in favour of the plant were also present.Also interesting that Ma seems to assuming personal responsibility for the decision, the head of government Wu Dun-yi is nowhere to be seen.

That's an interesting observation, M, about Wu Den-yih. My own perception is that there is a quiet, strong opposition to this plant, even among Blues. Killing the plant could have many positives among voters for Ma.

The big difference is that Chen viewed Taiwan as his center, while Ma views Taiwan as a periphery of China. Their policies were quite different in this regard. Ma is an ROC ideologue trying to wrest Taiwan back to Ma's heyday in the 1970's.

As far as support for bug business and developers... no big difference.

At best, that "IF" would be 138m high, and cover an area of 398km2 - about 45% bigger than Taipei City.

Alternatively, that "IF" would be large enough to encircle the coast of the entire island several times over.

In still another permutation, a mere 6.5% (let's be generous, assume significant technological improvement and call it 10%) of that "IF" would cover every inch of every rooftop of every kind of building in all of Taiwan's cities, major and minor.

So, IF, you environmentalists can find a cure for rectocranialitis, then perhaps you could start talking about a much smaller and practically affordable IF.

"At best, that "IF" would be 138m high, and cover an area of 398km2 - about 45% bigger than Taipei City.

Alternatively, that "IF" would be large enough to encircle the coast of the entire island several times over."

Mike, Taiwan has currently over 200,000 hectares of fallow farm land. That converts to 2000 km2, 5 times the area you think is itself impossible to find. Taiwan is not hurting for land, both onshore and off.

M - yes countries like Denmark for instance whose total electricity production is only a fraction of Taiwan's: >40 TW hours per year as against 230 TW hours per year. So 25% in Denmark is <5% in Taiwan, and guess what Taiwan's renewable percentage already is?

RSK:

I did not say the area is "impossible" to find. The issue is not whether 25% from renewables can be technically accomplished - of course it can be - the issue is the costs (political-economic; not merely financial) of doing so on such a scale. Believe it or not, I like wind turbines, but demand for a wind farm on that scale means Taipower (and by extension, us the taxpayers) are going to get royally screwed in lease rates, unless the government turns fascist on the farmers associations.

This is one more reason why I'd advocate getting the State out of the business of subsidizing agriculture. Do that, and Taipower will be able to build plenty of wind turbines - and I'd cheer that all day long.

You're missing the point. If you read mike's blog you'll see that he is not trying to say that wind power is not doable. Rather, he is convinced that implementing wind power in Taiwan on a large scale is only possible if the government resorts to massive land theft, something which he is vehemently opposed to.

And since mike is zealously protective of the welfare of farmers (to name one of the many groups for which he has great concern for), your statement that Taiwan has 200,000 hectares of fallow farm land will not change his mind in the least.

I believe you have two debate strategies:

1) Argue that government appropriation of land is justified in this case. (Not recommended.)

2) Argue that it is possible to use that farmland as windfarmland without affecting the farmers usage of it as farmland.

Believe it or not, I like wind turbines, but demand for a wind farm on that scale means Taipower (and by extension, us the taxpayers) are going to get royally screwed in lease rates, unless the government turns fascist on the farmers associations.

There is no country in which this has occurred, so it is hard to understand why you are so relentlessly focused on this outcome. In every case that I know, farmers have welcomed the extra income from the turbines, and ratepayers the lower rates from windpower. Taiwan is entirely free of Randplanet's evidence-free ideological beliefs that government is inherently evil, so no doubt meaningful compromises can be worked out.

I don't know how this is handled in Taiwan, but in the UK, there is an additional problem in that windfarms have been turned into a rent-seeker's wet dream by the government's stupid issuance of "renewables obligation certificates" which are actually worth more than the electricity the turbines produce!

M - yes countries like Denmark for instance whose total electricity production is only a fraction of Taiwan's: >40 TW hours per year as against 230 TW hours per year. So 25% in Denmark is <5% in Taiwan, and guess what Taiwan's renewable percentage already is?

RSK:

I did not say the area is "impossible" to find.

You did argue that it would be practically impossible by claiming that it would involve covering the whole of Taiwan with wind turbines or surrounding it with off shore wind farms.You also neglect to mention that many countries with much higher energy use than Denmark get over 25% of their energy from renewables. Many other major industrialized countries are gradually approaching that share.

http://social.windenergyupdate.com/qa/scotland%E2%80%99s-commercial-windfarm-site-leases-headed-sky-highMike Reid: Existing projects won’t be affected, given that rent figures are usually agreed at the beginning of the planning and consent process. Most agreements don’t give the owner the chance to review the rents to an open market level but have annual increases to the RPI and stepped rental uplifts from year 10 onwards. Owners that have agreed terms are often locked into 25-year lease agreements.

Even though these landowners may missing out on potentially higher rents, the current earnings from the land lease, compared to other land uses (such as sheep farming), is still higher.

Wind farm projects in the pipeline will, however be affected by higher rents. It shouldn’t have a significant impact, with increasing technological efficiencies helping to counterbalance the cost, but it will need to be factored into the developer’s financing model.

It's good that the government is subsidizing wind power, given the ungodly subsidies to fossil fuels, including natural gas.

"It shouldn’t have a significant impact, with increasing technological efficiencies helping to counterbalance the cost, but it will need to be factored into the developer’s financing model."

Gosh, the sky really isn't falling...again.

As for Taiwan, most wind projects that I have read about will be off the west coast and on the outer islands. I only mentioned the 200,000 hectares of fallow land because you were clearly trying to suggest that there wasn't the land for windfarms to provide 25% of energy. There is but you are free to shift the goalposts of your argument again if you like.

"You did argue that it would be practically impossible by claiming that it would involve covering the whole of Taiwan with wind turbines..."

I did not in fact say that "M", so you will retract that assertion. I said it would take hundreds of km2, as any honest reader can see. At most, the turbines of the Roscoe farm Turton linked to a while back would - to generate power on this scale - take up just over a quarter of the island.

Turton - given that the farmers in Taiwan already will have a good idea of the scale at which Tsai would be committed to building windfarms, they could effectively hold her to ransom from the very beginning if they want to.

If that happened, Tsai would have three ways out: either she could scale down any planned windfarm investment and keep the farmers in the dark by investing in more gas-fired plants (which she should do anyway), or she could threaten to cut their subsidies (which she also should do anyway), or she could go fascist on them (which she most certainly should not do).

"It's good that the government is subsidizing wind power, given the ungodly subsidies to fossil fuels, including natural gas."

My bet is that neither onshore wind power nor natural gas would need subsidies in order to be competitive - so good, extricate the State from its politicization of industrial energy production entirely, and add in the appropriate spending reductions, tax cuts and abolish the rent-seekers.

"The demand for larger-scale commercial wind farm sites is bigger than the current supply of land."

Demand exceeding supply means upward pressure on prices. Nobody else in Taiwan has this sort of land available, yet Tsai is committed to replacing nukes and throwing money into renewables. They'll have seen her coming already if they've got any brains. And that's without even considering the fact that we'd end up paying over the odds for our electricity because of the surplus a windfarm tends to produce at the wrong times.

Demand exceeding supply means upward pressure on prices. Nobody else in Taiwan has this sort of land available,

Mike, go back and read the whole article. It clearly states that the upward pressure on prices is not seriously affecting the wind industry.

Robert has already pointed out that fallow land is in huge supply in Taiwan, never mind that the amount of land which your simplistic calculations identify is only a tiny plot compared to the 32000 square kms Taiwan has.

You seem unable to imagine a world like the world that exists in reality -- you know, where many farmers opt for wind machines because they pay well, where the government has no need to seize land because wind machines are popular, where wind and other renewables effectively supply large proportions of power for many nations, etc. Believe it or not, no one will have any land seized for wind machine construction (in fact local factions have already defeated wind projects in Taiwan). Believe it or not, not only can existing technology fulfill Tsai's demands but future wind technologies will perform even better -- Norway has just deployed the first 10 MW floating wind machine which can be placed in really deep water where constant and powerful winds blow. You tend to think of wind as a "mature" technology without really thinking that wind is a package of technological systems, many of which are still in their infancy (like deployment and siting techs) while others are moribund and likely to see revolutionary development when the switch to renewables occurs (like transmission tech and transmission system organization technologies). Your arguments are simplistic and lack even basic familiarity with the topic at hand.

I permitted you to comment here because I mentioned you. Hopefully your next comment will show that you've fully processed the information that you yourself put up here, and that others have offered.

"It clearly states that the upward pressure on prices is not seriously affecting the wind industry."

The wind industry in Scotland was built up incrementally - the price changes do not affect those wind turbines already built, but those which are planned for the future. Different assumptions must be made in Taiwan because Tsai has openly talked about replacing nuclear power (18% of total electricity production), and the environmentalists have gone even further and suggested 25% (and no doubt some will be pushing for a figure of 28%-30% in order to rpelace coal). Whereas in Scotland landowners were not in a position to know the scale of the demand for wind turbines before setting their prices, this is far more likely to be the case in Taiwan because of Tsai's announcement - one which makes her seem moderate in comparison to some of her supporters. The farmers association will already be thinking about this because they are going to make a killing if they play their cards right.

"Robert has already pointed out that fallow land is in huge supply in Taiwan, never mind that the amount of land which your simplistic calculations identify is only a tiny plot compared to the 32000 square kms Taiwan has."

My calculations are simple because the problem is simple. What simple Robert failed to grasp was that acquiring many plots of land on that sort of scale has significant cost implications. Only 2000 square kilometres might actually available and all of it controlled by farmers - who are politically organized enough to dictate the financial terms of any lease arrangements, assuming the State does not coerce them. Since the farmers control the limited supply of land, and they are looking at essentially one buyer (Taipower, via a Tsai government) there are only two reasons why they would not take advantage of this: one is that the government may threaten to cut their subsidies and other benefits, whilst the other is that the government may threaten them with force. That doesn't mean the windfarms could never get built - but it does mean they would likely cost far more than they would if the State was not involved in either agriculture or energy. Wind power is great, but trying to do it on the sort of scale being talked about would be a serious blunder....

"Believe it or not, not only can existing technology fulfill Tsai's demands but future wind technologies will perform even better -- Norway has just deployed the first 10 MW floating wind machine which can be placed in really deep water where constant and powerful winds blow."

Those existing technologies are called combined-cyle gas turbines.

I am aware of the 10 MW turbines in Norway: the prototype cost almost NT$2 billion. Let's assume the production version would cost 10% of that at NT$200 million. Let's further assume that, because of technological improvements and a suitable wind environment (an assumption which might not be transferable to Taiwan - I don't know), such a 10 MW turbine will operate at 50% efficiency across a year. In order to replace nuclear power in Taiwan in electricity volume alone (leaving aside the cost implications of load management), a minimum of 820 of those turbines would have to be built. If we were to be more cautious and assume an average efficiency of 25%, then 1,640 of them would have to be built. In capital costs alone therefore, at NT$200 million per turbine, we're talking between NT$164 billion and NT$328 billion. And then there will be the maintenance, power transmission and grid connection costs - costs which are significantly lower for either a nuclear or a gas-fired power plant.

"You tend to think of wind as a "mature" technology without really thinking that wind is a package of technological systems, many of which are still in their infancy (like deployment and siting techs) while others are moribund and likely to see revolutionary development when the switch to renewables occurs (like transmission tech and transmission system organization technologies)."

That may well be so (although those improvements will most likely be marginal) - but the context for this debate is the 14 year time frame in which a Tsai administration would like to phase out nuclear power in Taiwan and replace it - or perhaps even exceed it - with renewables like wind. Even if those revolutionary changes do occur in the next 14 years, they will have to occur before any investment decisions are made.

"...overcoming Taipower's aversion to it, as well as reforming Taiwan's hidebound regulations."

10 MW turbine will operate at 50% efficiency across a year. In order to replace nuclear power in Taiwan in electricity volume alone (leaving aside the cost implications of load management), a minimum of 820 of those turbines would have to be built. I

Marc: you have my permission to set out what you think those "logical fallacies" are right here, right now...

And RSK - oh well if that's true, then be sure to pop over to my blog when you and your mates are celebrating Lenin's birthday in a week or so... oh wait, you won't be able to because you'll be stumbling around in the dark for candles.

Mike's manner might piss some of you (all of you?) off, but once he started talking real numbers (in the post beginning "Those existing technologies are called combined-cyle gas turbines.") you (Michael Turton, Robert Scott Kelly, and Marc) decided that mockery and the threat of reimplementing his ban (which IIRC was caused by him asking questions that no-one really liked the answers to) would be the best form of return argument.

Whatever you think of him personally, the points Mike made in that post are extremely relevant - don't you think so? Or is ignoring these questions the best way to deal with the issue?

We mocked Fagan because, as I and others repeatedly pointed out, his "numbers" were rank nonsense.

His numbers are not nonsense; I'm an engineer and I can verify that they're "good enough for government work". If you can show that they're nonsense I'd enjoy seeing the math.

None of the points he made was relevant.

Capital costs, and critically, maintenance and power transmission/grid connection costs were items he raised that are being ignored. An offshore wind-farm will incur all of these in spades.

The 14-year time frame he mentioned is also very germane and is generally ignored when people say that the technology is still maturing. At some point, a decision-maker will choose to invest in this technology and future innovation will not be relevant to that particular investment.

Fagan was banned here for reasons that ought to be clear right from this conversation, starting with a constant substitution of ideology for reality.

His argumentation method is polemic; if you can demonstrate that he is holding a misconception he will retract his comment. If, on the other hand, you can't answer him with something factual and based in reality, you'll just get his scorn.

While his method is abrasive, I don't think his point of view is any more ideological than any of yours. In fact, I'm tempted to say it's less so, given the historical record of your blog. Some of the questions he asks (however unpleasant) ought to be answered and bear thinking about.

Thanks, Steve. If you had read the comments you might have noticed that this was Randplanet's first mention of those items after tossing out unsourced numbers apparently at random, without reference to extant or planned wind farms in Taiwan, and by then he had with typical Randplanent efficiency, entirely missed the point of the previous comment. But you can go on thinking what you like and he can go on sneering at us; no skin off my back.

In the meantime bone up on the Changhua Offshore Wind project, a 600 MW project which has a projected "area" of 56 km2. Use Randplanet calculations and see how much offshore wind we'd need to replace our nukes...

His analysis in his last comment which concludes that we need "between NT$164 billion and NT$328 billion" for offshore farms to replace nuclear is sound if we compare it to the Changhua plan.

How could it not be "sound" since the range offered is so huge?

I was actually thinking about area, not costs. In any cases prices will fall some if the project is scaled up. Actually, to replace all the current nuke capacity of 5100 MW we'd need even more wind. Coal plants are 8800 MW so we'd need about 18-19 GW of wind to replace all that. Thorium reactors, anyone?

The real issue isn't nukes, which have to go tomorrow. It's the coal plants, which have to go NOW. Industrial civilization has to get down to zero carbon within this decade or we might not be able to save the biosphere. How to replace our fossil fuel plants is what we should be discussing.

I hate to come back and comment without having read the paper you referred me to, but in answer to the question "How to replace our fossil fuel plants... [NOW]" the answer is nuclear power.

To replace fossil fuels (or current nuclear power) we're talking about wind farms on a scale larger than cities, and they've got to be manufactured, shipped, constructed and maintained with even more resources (steel, electricity in the manufacture, gasoline to transport etc. etc.).

At the same time, consider the energy per kilogram of various materials. I know this is pretty basic and there are a lot of caveats with this, including (and not limited to) the efficiency of energy extraction, the need for an oxidizer when burning coal etc but bear with me...

In crude terms then, you need 2,500 tons of coal to do the same job as 1kg of nuclear fuel. That's 2500 tons that needs to be transported to your power plant in a train and then burned.

The nuclear waste problem, on the other hand (and I acknowledge that I wouldn't want it in my backyard) is much smaller. A few dozen tons of radioactive waste per year ought to be handle-able if smart people were allowed to work on waste-management solutions.

For me, energy production is a problem of scale. I've been a proponent of nuclear power for years and I wish the green lobby could see clearly enough to realize that it could (and should) be a good solution to energy needs. Yes, I'm in full agreement that other methods need to be developed, but given that no-one is willing to turn the lights off for the time it'll take them to be developed, energy companies ought to be building some later fourth-generation nuclear power plants and weaning us off coal.

And while they're at it, some transparency and safety-conscious engineering wouldn't be a bad thing.

Urgh... I quoted the energy density of uranium used in a fast-breeder reactor like Chernobyl. Light water reactor fuel is about 25 times less energetic, so 1kg is equivalent to around 100 tons of coal.

LOL. Thanks. But Taiwan faces all the same problems that Japan does, with the additional issue of volcanoes near our nuke plants. LWR uranium nukes clearly are not a viable long-term solution. What's your take on Thorium?

Playing devil's advocate for a minute, I'm not going to say that their long-term unviability is self-evident purely from environmental factors. If Taipower built modern reactors they should be much more resilient than the old ones at Fukushima.

No, my biggest worries stem from 差不多-ism and the fact that instead of replacing/maintaining components with quality parts sourced from qualified vendors when needed, A-Huang the plant manager will probably try to save a few bucks by calling his cousin in Shulin to knock up some pipe elbows for him that are supposed to be able to contain high-pressure super-heated steam.

What's your take on Thorium?

I'm sorry, I can only confess my ignorance to anything on the topic beyond what is offered on Wikipedia.

My take is (or was, when I stopped studying this field ten years ago) that enhanced designs of the CANDU reactor should be much safer than most reactors we see around us: they're safer and produce less-radioactive byproducts but there just aren't many of them out there.

Yes, there's also a Swedish design that is decades old that can be cooled in an emergency by fire trucks. But we seem to be in some weird path dependent program where everyone is focused on LWRs. *sigh*

What are the plans to inspecting and overhauling the currently running plants?

For all this talk about replacing nuclear or safer nuclear or stopping the 4th plant, the fact is, none of that is going to happen anytime soon. Meanwhile there are three plants chugging away right now which have been running for quite a while now and will continue to do so. For anyone even the least bit concerned about a sudden mid-life crisis, a proper review of those three plants should be the first and primary concern, not some hypothetical alternative energy source 5 to 14 years away.

Maybe coal has to go NOW, but nuclear should have been overhauled yesterday.

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